


The Original

by ClaraxBarton



Series: Thank you fics [10]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, pre-avengers, winterhawk - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 17:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton
Summary: It's December in Paris, 1996, and Clint Barton meets the Winter Soldier for the first time.





	The Original

**Author's Note:**

  * For [supersockie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supersockie/gifts).

> Now beta read by the amazing Ro!!

Paris. December. 1996.

  
  


Clint felt more than a little like Goldilocks.

The City of Lights was something else, something… something he hadn’t really expected. Not that, really, he had much expectations for  _ anything _ in life these days.

Ever since striking out on his own five years ago - or, more accurately, being left for dead by Barney and Trickshot while the traveling criminal circus got the hell out of Dodge - Clint had found himself wandering from one place to another.

He had a very specific, very limited, skillset, and being a stubborn asshole with good aim wasn’t actually that handy for getting many jobs outside of contract killing. 

Or, at least, that’s what Clint told himself on the not-as-bad days - that he was good at this thing, could get paid for it, and could clean up the world one dead bad guy at a time.

On the actual bad days, Clint wasn’t at all surprised to look in the mirror and see the flat, blue eyes of his father and bruises of a sleepless night staring back at him. After all, what else was he good for but pain and destruction?

Clint had been in Paris for almost a month, had found a shitty little closet of an apartment in Popincourt, as the locals called the 11th arrondissement - all of it was jarring and confusing to Clint, who had grown up speaking French in the circus with the trio of Algerian acrobats who had taught him much more than their language but definitely nothing about the city none of them had ever visited.

A month was just enough time for Clint to realize that, as convenient as Paris was for getting around Europe and taking on various jobs, it wasn’t home, and it wasn’t likely to ever  _ be _ home.

Then again, did he ever have a home?

It wasn’t the farm in Iowa that had been repossessed by the bank after his parents’ deaths.

It wasn’t the circus.

It wasn’t at Barney’s side.

Clint was pretty sure that he didn’t  _ have _ a home, and likely never would.

Of course, that didn’t stop him from looking.

Hence, his Goldilocks adventures through the Parisian nightlife.

Clubs weren’t his thing - too many people, too much noise, too much  _ much _ .

The quaint little cafes that stayed open late weren’t either. He felt too exposed, sitting on a skeletal chair illuminated by amber light, and felt too empty and dull to belong.

So bars were his thing. Or, well, the newest avenue for his searches.

There were trendy spots - dark and dim and throbbing with bass - and there were refined, leather and wood-paneled places filled with the curling, sickly sweet smoke of cigars. Neither were for him.

Nowhere was home.

With Clint’s talents for language and mimicry, he passed as, if not a local, not a tourist. He hadn’t been ‘mistaken’ for an American since his second day living in Paris, and he seemed to have finally hit a sweet spot with his accent that convinced most Parisians that he was a Spaniard. Which was, at the very least, infinitely better than being an American.

That didn’t mean that he didn’t feel a little nostalgic tug every time he heard English being spoken with that distinctive American twang, and it didn’t mean that sometimes he didn’t think about going back to the States, didn’t wonder where his brother was, where the circus was, or any number of other things that weren’t actually all that conducive to trying to build a future for himself.

Still, when he stumbled across Harry’s New York Bar one night in the first arrondissement, he paused outside the doors.

He stared at it for too long, really. Long enough to get bumped into a few times, long enough for the doors to open and release snatches of music and laughter and golden light. Long enough to see that the bar’s patrons weren’t quite upscale, but weren’t slumming it either.

Clint, in his black trousers and purple sweater, could typically blend into most crowds on either end of the spectrum. Being with the circus had taught him how to do that - how to disappear among the locals just as easily as stand out from them - and after a few thrift store visits, Clint’s wardrobe was almost wholly unremarkable in any European city.

Eventually, feeling more than a little silly, Clint went into the bar.

It wasn’t at all what he was expecting.

Though, to be fair, he hadn’t really been expecting all that much.

He had never even been to New York, so maybe this is what most bars looked like there, though he doubted it.

Everything was lined in rich, wooden molding, and it looked old-timey, as if it had been around for a hundred years or more. Not that that was unique in Paris - hell, that was practically  _ new _ \- but it was old for Clint. It felt a little surreal, especially when he heard all of the conversations around him being spoken in English.

Tourists and expats were mingling, laughing and talking about baseball and the stock market and barbeque, and Clint felt a pang of longing so intense he almost turned to leave.

And he would have, too, had his eyes not skated across a man in all black, with shoulder-length brown hair and slate gray eyes and a stubbled jaw and a champagne glass of amber liquid in one hand.

He was looking right at Clint.

At twenty-two, after a decade of living with the circus, after five years on his own after that doing whatever he could to make a buck and eventually falling into a certain segment of the underworld that kept him connected with people and organizations that would pay Clint to kill other people, Clint didn’t consider himself naive or innocent at all.

But this man? With his cold eyes that somehow felt like they were burning right through Clint?

He made Clint’s heart skip a beat and made his palms feel sweaty and made Clint very, very aware of the fact that he  _ was _ innocent and naive.

It wasn’t the first time Clint had been on this end of that kind of look - wasn’t the first time a stranger had eye-fucked him or even smirked at him all knowing and cocky like the man was doing now.

But it was the first time Clint had felt a  _ reaction _ to it that wasn’t disinterest or worse.

Clint swallowed, but his tongue felt thick in his dry mouth.

The man, still just sitting there holding a glass, leaned against the red leather cushion at his back, against the wall, and arched an eyebrow at Clint.

It was a challenge or an invitation, or maybe somehow both.

And Clint… Clint should really leave. Should just turn around and walk out of here and forget having ever seen this man.

But Clint  _ should _ do a lot of things.

And Clint didn’t, as a general rule, do them.

So, he arched an eyebrow back, squared his shoulders, and did his best to saunter through the room and appear as confident and relaxed as the man himself looked.

When Clint came to a stop at the open chair across from the man, it was clear his little show hadn’t worked at  _ all _ .

The man was still smirking, looking up at Clint now with those eyes, his curved lips dark and full. His facial structure was sharp - nose, cheeks, jaw, brows - and the taut stretch of his pale skin was softened only slightly by his stubble.

He looked dangerous in a way that reminded Clint of soaring through the air on the trapeze, and he found himself licking his lips.

The man lifted both eyebrows.

“Buy me a drink,” Clint said in English, bravado forced and voice far from steady.

“Sit down,” the man countered, speaking to Clint in a growl of a voice that shivered down Clint’s spine.

Clint sat down.

The man raised a negligent left hand to signal to the bartender. He had a black leather glove on his hand, which gave Clint pause, but he had been around enough people who hid parts of themselves over the years that it didn’t concern him all that much.

A waiter appeared at Clint’s side.

“Another Sidecar,” the man said, voice still that low growl that  _ still _ did something to Clint.

The waiter nodded, and vanished as quickly and silently as he had appeared.

“You got a name, kid?” the man asked Clint after taking a sip of his drink.

Clint bristled. The man looked like he was in his late twenties, only a few years older than Clint at most. Or, well, nearly a decade, but still. Clint wasn’t a kid.

“Sure do,” Clint nearly sneered.

The man’s lips twitched, and his eyes turned from hot to amused.

“How many drinks I gotta buy you before you share it with me?” he asked, and the more he spoke, the more he sounded… like the bar they sat in. American, but not the America Clint knew. Old-timey, almost. New York. Surreal.

“Dunno yet,” Clint shrugged, and tried to appear unruffled by the man’s frank appraisal and general… everything. “What about you?”

“Oh, you don’t have to buy me a drink for my name, gorgeous.” The man smiled, wide and warm and breathtaking. “I’m Jamey.”

The waiter reappeared, Clint’s drink in hand, and deposited it in front of him.

Clint took a cautious sip. He’d never had a Sidecar - he’d never  _ heard _ of a Sidecar. It was sour but sweet at the same time, and the sugar on the rim of the glass had Clint licking his lips as he sat the glass back down.

The man - Jamey - watched him intently. The humor was gone from his eyes.

“Well?” Jamey prompted.

“It’s not terrible,” Clint shrugged.

Jamey laughed, and it was a rich sound, right at home with the golden lights around them and the jewel-toned walls and art that decorated them. 

“Long way from home, aren’t you?” Jamey asked him.

Clint almost laughed.

_ Home _ . It reminded him of his thoughts earlier, of the reality that he didn’t and never would have a home.

“What about you? You didn’t learn how to speak English here,” Clint countered.

Jamey draped his left arm over the back of the bench, and Clint had a momentary,  _ insane _ desire to be under that arm.

“Brooklyn,” Jamey answered. “Haven’t been back in… forever, I think.” He was frowning slightly, eyebrows drawn together and mouth pressed in a tight line.

It was a weird thing to say, but before Clint could press him or even think about it all that much, Jamey’s legs were tangling with his under the table.

“I’m not a kid,” Clint had to say.

Jamey’s frown relaxed back into a smirk.

“If you were, I wouldn’t be talking to you,” he said. “And I sure as hell wouldn’t be thinking about taking you out back and trying to convince you to tell me your name.”

In other circumstances - hell, in almost  _ any _ other circumstance - Clint would have interpreted that as a threat.

But in these circumstances? With those eyes searing into him?

Clint tossed back his drink, wincing a little at the chilly burn of it.

“What are you waiting for?” he challenged Jamey.

The other man laughed and shook his head.

“You’re right. S’not like I’ve got forever, anyway,” he said, and finished off his own drink.

He dug into his pocket and dropped two crumpled twenty Franc notes on the table.

“C’mon,” he said, and stood up and held out his right hand towards Clint.

Clint took it, allowed the other man to pull him to his feet, and was only a  _ little _ awed by how strong he was.

Jamey kept their hands twined together, completely unconcerned about the rest of the bar, and led Clint through the narrow kitchen and out to the even narrower alley behind the bar.

Abruptly, Clint found himself shoved up against the rough wall and Jamey crowded close.

They were almost the same height. Clint might be an inch or so taller, but he felt small, felt fragile in Jamey’s presence and pressed between him and the wall.

Jamey closed the distance between their lips, and brushed his own against Clint’s in a gentle, almost chaste, caress.

Clint reacted by nipping Jamey’s lower lip and the man groaned, and quite suddenly, it felt like Clint was being devoured as Jamey’s lips parted and he deepened the kiss.

By the time Jamey pulled away, Clint was clinging to him and they were both breathing hard.

“I’m Clint,” he said, and this time he didn’t care at all that his voice was so unsteady.

“Nice to meet you, Clint,” Jamey said.

-o-

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Harry's Bar in Paris was where Hemingway hung out, and the Sidecar was one of their original drinks, and one that was around in the 30s, so one that Bucky would have been familiar with. Supposedly this is where the Bloody Mary and the French 75 were also invented. Anyway... that's the fic!


End file.
